Living in a country that mostly respects the individual's freedom of conscience, it's hard to imagine the amount of courage it must take to do such a thing in a country where people can just be 'disappeared' for decades (or suffer 'unfortunate' accidents in prison).

Mr. Ran was a reluctant critic, saying he would rather be traveling, drinking wine and reading. “In a free country I would happily spend my life in the library doing research,” he said in one post. “But I live in a country where I cannot in good conscience merely live such a life. I feel that I have no alternative. I have to voice my criticisms of our messed up social reality. Otherwise I would be uneasy. I would not be able to sleep well.”

It's funny. If you told me this was a New Yorker who wrote this, I would automatically assume he was some entitled hipster and latter-day yippie who probably works at Media Matters and posts his rants to Daily Kos. But you tell me he's a Chinese dissident, and my viewpoint instantly changes.

Kirby perhaps folks on the left, like myself, admire China for its dedications to educations, half of our graduate programs in STEM are Chinese, and their willingness to support the development of infrastructure and new technologies, but most of us are well aware the repressive nature of China-- think about the lefty movement to free Tibet. To my mainland Chinese friends who are bursting with pride, I ask if they have read The Corpse Walker by LIao Yiwu and what they think about his views; you might want to read it if you haven't